How Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum's England is making Test cricket interesting

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England won the second test in Multan on Monday to secure the test series with an unassailable 2-0 lead. Mark Wood starred for the English side with 4 wickets as the Pakistan batters fell victim to his fiery spell just before lunch on the fourth day.

The astonishing fact of this series has been England have scored runs at a rapid pace in both matches. In the first match, they created history by scoring most runs in a day of the test match, and they continued their rapid scoring prowess in the second one as well. We will get to that later.

PAK vs ENG Multan Test: As it happened

England posted 281 runs in the first inning mainly courtesy of Ben Duckett (63) and Ollie Pope (60). Captain Ben Stokes also had a start but failed to convert while Mark Wood smashed a quick-fire 36 to take England beyond 250. 24-year-old debutant spinner Abrar Ahmed picked up 7 wickets in his debut match.

But Pakistan failed to consolidate on that as they managed only 202 runs in their first inning. Despite some decent batting by Babar Azam (75) and Saud Shakeel (63), they lost their last 8 wickets in just 60 runs to concede a 79 runs lead to the visitors. Jack Leach picked up 4 wickets for England.

Harry Brook slams ton in 2nd innings

In their second inning, Harry Brook scored a fantastic 108 as England amassed 275 runs on the board, with a healthy lead of 354. Abrar Ahmed starred again with the ball, this time picking up 4 wickets.

Pakistan put up a Fight in Run Chase

Pakistan needed 355 runs to level the series. Abdullah Shafique (45) and Mohammed Rizwan (30) both had starts, but Mark Wood and James Anderson scalped their wickets respectively to put the home side under pressure. Skipper Babar Azam also failed cheaply as Ollie Robinson cleaned up his stumps when the star was just on 1.

Saud Shakeel and Imam-ul-Haq steadied the ship but wickets kept on falling in regular intervals for Pakistan. Shakeel was cleaned up by Mark Wood just six runs from his century, and that put a significant dent to Pakistan's run chase. With 64 runs still needed with 3 wickets in hand, the hosts managed to score only 37 runs and bundled out 26 runs short of their target.

Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum Making Test cricket interesting

Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum are making a radical change to the approach while playing the longest format of the game. Brendon McCullum, the England coach, was known to be one of the most aggressive players in his playing days, and we are seeing a reflection of that in his coaching tenure as well.

England have scored runs well over 5 runs per over in the series so far, which is a brand-new style of play. The aggressiveness from their batters, and scoring runs faster than the usual test regime are quite clearly making the game a lot more interesting to the viewers.

In the second test, England scored at 4.83 runs per over. In the first inning of the first test, their run rate was 6.50 as they managed 657 runs in just 101 overs. These astonishing stats show the motto of their vision, which is playing test cricket in the limited overs way, breaking the age-old concept of watchful and slow batting demeanour of test cricket.

This ploy so far has worked for England. Players like Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Harry Brook and others have executed their plans excellently. Although the Pakistan pitch is comparably easier to bat on, it has to be seen whether England stick with the same vision against more onerous opponents in tougher conditions. But the message from McCullum and co. is clear and exciting.